UC Leaders to Meet with Friedrich About Expanded Sanctions

After a committee recommended barring members of single gender social organizations from holding leadership positions on the Undergraduate Council, the current UC leaders said they will meet with College administrators to discuss the proposed penalty.

A new report from a committee studying how to implement historic penalties on members of final clubs and Greek organizations recommends expanding the sanctions to include the UC. The implementation committee—which counts last year’s president and vice president of the UC among its members—presented its recommendations to Khurana, who will review them.

Starting with the class of 2021, the current policy bans members of unrecognized single-gender social groups from leadership roles in recognized student organizations and varsity captaincies. The policy could be "revised or replaced" as soon as next fall, though, and the exact impact of the committee's recommendations remains uncertain.

UC President Yasmin Z. Sachee ’18 and Vice President Cameron K. Khansarinia ’18 said at Sunday’s UC meeting they will meet with Associate Dean of Student Life David R. Friedrich Monday to discuss the fate of future UC leaders.

Sachee is a member of the all-female Bee Club, and has previously opposed the sanctions.

Khansarinia said he plans on reading the suggestions in Friedrich’s office with Sachee before casting judgements about the updated sanctions.

“The first thing will be to read the report and see what’s in it,” he said. “And then we’ll probably take some time to study it and think about it, and then regroup with the Council once it’s been released, and then voice our considerations.

Sachee said Thursday that she would not speculate on “hypotheticals,” since Khurana has not yet officially responded to the committee’s recommendations.

Khansarinia asked UC members for their opinions on the committee’s proposals, as well as any questions members had for Friedrich at the group’s general meeting Sunday evening.

Crimson Yard representative Nadine M. Khoury ’20 said she sees the UC as an organization similar to other recognized student organizations.

“If you’re going to prevent leadership from being attained by people in single-gender social organizations for regular clubs, then I don’t see how that can’t cross-apply to the UC, because we are also a community of students that elect people to leadership,” she said. “If we are going to implement the sanctions, we have to implement it at the highest level of leadership.”

Others UC members, like Elm Yard representative Adam E. Harper ’20, said the College should have no jurisdiction over whom the student body elects to represent itself.

“I would make the point that those kind of moral decisions about who should be representing you shouldn’t be made by an administration and it should be made by the student body itself,” he said.

Khansarinia said the Council’s next step should be to formulate an official response to the proposals.

According to three people involved in crafting the recommendations, the implementation committee also suggested the policy expand to include leadership of The Crimson—an unrecognized group—and increase the number of prohibited fellowships for students in single-gender final clubs and Greek organizations.

President of the Crimson Derek K. Choi ’18 said in a statement last week that the sanctions do not apply to The Crimson, as the newspaper is “editorially, organizationally, and financially independent from Harvard College.”

—Staff writer Andrew J. Zucker can be reached at andrew.zucker@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewJZucker.